It was a strange weekend – strange for its’ roller coaster of emotions. Friday night we hosted our 2nd "Starving Artists’ Dinner". We invited some Theatre students from Central over for dinner as well as our good friend Ann who teaches Theatre at  Central. We had a wonderful dinner before going over to the Pella Community Center for the announcement of USP’s playwriting contest winners. I was really excited to have Taylor and Madison there. Afterwards, we had a big group of friends come back to our house for a party. It was a blast. What wonderful people.

My play was awarded 2nd prize in the contest, which is great. The staged reading of the first few minutes of my script went really well and the audience loved it. As I read the judges comments it became clear that I was hosed by one of the three judges who didn’t like it and dismissed it with terrible ratings that were neither explained or justified. I won’t lie to you – I was disappointed. I wanted to win. C’est la vie.

To add insult to injury, Wendy and I went out to rake leaves on Saturday morning to find that someone had written "LOSERS" in bright pink chalk across our driveway. Great.

I know that 2nd place is something to be proud of. I know that everyone in the audience liked my play. I know I won $300 for 2nd and it’s better than nothing. I know that USP still wants to produce the play sometime in the future. I know that this is a great learning and character building experience – yada, yada, yada – blah, blah, blah. I know all that.

Sometimes character building sucks.